Lost and Found
by tobia
Summary: Joan's reaction to a tragic event. Second person. Some very guarded references to adult issues. Your feedback is needed. Epilogue added!
1. Chapter 1

_Lost and found_

**Author's note: Joan of Arcadia does not belong to me; I could never produce anything that spectacular!**

_Tell someone._ You know that's what to do. Your parents, the school system, and even the kind folks on TV have pounded that message into your head since childhood. Yet right now you can't envision yourself doing that at all. There is, you realize, a huge difference between knowing what to do and actually having the courage to _do_ it.

So you stand there on the Arcadian sidewalk and stare at the sky. It is a beautiful starlit night, like something God would be point out to you as an example of His "perfect system." He loves to remind you of His master craftsmanship and yet never will explain to you _why_ imperfect things seem to happen in His "perfect" creation.

_Why? _you ponder, knowing all the while you aren't going to get an answer. Out of all the questions you could ask, it is the one He seems to eschew the most. It is also the answer you want the most. Especially now.

_Fine. If You won't give me "why?," how about "where?" or "who?" Could You spring for that at least?_

And where could you go? Not to Grace's house, you don't know what her mother will be like tonight, and as strong as she is, you know she can't handle both of you at once. Adam's is out, too; as much as you love him, you can't stand the idea of him touching you. The hospital? Forget it. Your parents would be called, your dad would kill someone, your mom would freak… You can't handle that tonight.

So you just start walking without thinking, figuring you'll end up wherever your feet take you. You trudge along, dreading your arrival and the consequences you'll be sure to face.

_Everything leaves ripples_.

Lo and behold, you end up at your front porch. You can't help but think this is His doing somehow, though you know He would just give a free will lecture again.

You attempt to enter unnoticed, only to be greeted by your mother and father waiting for you on the couch. At least, it feels like they're waiting for you. Dr. Dan would have probably come up with some psychobabble about the projection of unconscious desires or some such thing. You sure hope you can get out of counseling this time around or at least get a more competent psychiatrist, one that doesn't think he can "take God away from you."

You try to run past your parents into your room, but there must be something in your face that gives it away (You were never good at hiding your emotions, anyway) because they tell you to stop and ask if everything's okay.

_Okay. Fine. Normal. Perfect._

You repeat these words to yourself in a silent mantra, knowing they are what you should say.

Yet for some reason you can't quite bring yourself to lie and collapse on your mother's lap, sobbing. She carcasses your hair softly like you were still a second grader, and they both ask you if you're okay. You wonder why they even bother to pose that as a question; you don't have to be omniscient to know the answer.

They want to know what happened, but you can hardly speak through your sobs. So they guess at words, offer up different scenarios, and tell you nod when the right one comes up. In the back of your mind, you can't help but think it's a perverted game of Twenty Questions.

After a few scenarios, you can't take it anymore. It exhausts you, draining your energy like that deer tick drained your blood. Everything sounds so horrible, and surviving one is hard enough. So you muster up your courage and say the word. It's a horrible, wretched, dirty word, and fits because it's just how you feel.

Molested.

--------

Out of all the places, you've ever been the hospital is probably the worst. It takes things away from people: Kevin's walking, your health, your faith, Judith's life. Now something more will be taken from you, but you can't quite put your figure on it. Your innocence? No, you lost that long ago when you realized that friends could die, that sports stars could spend their lives in wheelchairs, that ticks could kill you, that God could be silent… Your sense of dignity? Maybe a bit, but you've screwed up more things than you can count, dives, drums, and washing machines among them. Maybe that was the point of all those _humiliating_ missions, so you could lose it bit by bit instead of all at once. Maybe that way it doesn't hurt as bad quite as bad. But you still know _something_ will be left in the hospital tonight, and it's just a matter of time until you find out what.

The building seems to threaten you, taunting you with the painful memories it keeps.

_Crazy talk_, you tell yourself. But isn't seeing God crazy? And isn't it, at least for you, true?

Your parents hold you carefully and walk you into the ER. You feel very fragile and delicate, as though you might suddenly break or float away (Though you must admit, the latter sounds like a particularly wonderful option at the time). Dad walks up to the front desk in his "cop swagger"-that what's you, Luke, and Kevin deemed it years ago-and tells them that Joan Girardi is here.

He phoned in that you were coming while he drove you here, not as a father but as a cop reporting a case. He gave the basic info-your name, your age, the crime reported-simple procedure. Only you swear that you heard his voice crack ever so slightly when he said your name, as though he realized for that second that this wasn't quite the same as any other case. Then again, maybe you imagined it. You always were an imaginative child.

A nurse, a middle-aged woman, comes up to take you back to the examination room. She asks if you would like "Mom or Dad" (Why does the hospital staff always call them that?) to come. You decline, knowing there is no way on heaven or earth you would Dad to see this, and you don't want Mom to freak out. It might bring back too many memories for her. It wasn't the same, but it was close. Probably too close.

So you walk back alone, following the nurse dutifully through the pale gray hallways of the University Medical Center. It feels as though you're walking through a graveyard; everything and everyone reminds you of Judith, the girl you couldn't save. The girl that God _wouldn't_ save (At least, it felt like that to you.) But by some miracle, you don't become mad again because you keep hearing her voice saying that God was her "angel," finally seeing Him and finally finding faith.

You promise yourself this time you won't lose _your _faith. You hope.

-------

The nurse hands you a hospital gown and tells you to go behind the curtain and change. The thing is the same disgusting brown color you remember for your three week Lyme's-induced tenure here. Even in your crisis of faith, you somehow still found the energy to despise the thing, and you still do.

Upon stepping out from behind the curtain, you see that someone else, presumably the doctor, has entered the room. She's somewhat older than the nurse but not old enough to bear that description. Her hair is a light, bright blonde held back in a tight ponytail. You're glad to see it's not a guy, but you're even more relieved it's not God. Even though He's omniscient and created you and all, it still would have been unspeakably embarrassing for Him to show up now.

The doctor introduces herself as Dr. Lundstrum and tells you to get up on the examining table. You are to "lie back and try to stay as relaxed as possible."

_Yeah, good luck with that, _you think as you hop into the table.

The "examination" doesn't take that long at all, and it's more awkward feeling than painful, yet you know your face is probably bright crimson. This is far, far worse than getting your foot stuck in the washing machine.

When the doctor is finished, she takes off her gloves, washes her hands, and makes a couple of comments on your chart-you wonder if she thinks you're crazy after reading that thing.

She pats your hand and tells you to lie still while she speaks to your parents. Normally, you would object to the idea that your parents should know more about your body than you, but you're too tired and miserable to venture an argument (Grace still would, though). You just mutter a permissive "okay." As she walks out, you can't help but notice the unsettling expression on her face.

As you lie there, you try not to think about Judith, or Adam, or God, or Mom, or the events of tonight. Just for once, you'd like your mind to be a blank slate, harmless and benign. Yet you've never been good at that since meeting Him on that fateful September day. Throughout the months, He gave you so much food for thought that you pondered the possibility of your head literally exploding. Even when the Lyme's disease left you muddled and confused and crazy camp feed you its doctrine of extreme self-absorption, it never went away. You could never quite stop thinking about God and lessons and ripples and all the things on heaven and earth to which your eyes had been opened when you first saw Him.

So your goal is simply to make it until the doctor comes back in without thinking about important things. Futile, yes, but the simple fact you fight so hard to not think distracts you. It must work because by the time Dr. Lundstrum reenters with your parents in tow, you hardly thought of one of your taboo topics. You wonder if it would have gotten you through crazy camp without you going as, well, crazy as you did.

The expressions don't surprise you; Mom is visibly shaken; Dad looks troubled. He was never one for anger or tears; he must have actually yelled at you a total of five times in your entire life. Rather, he just gets this mixture of fear, anger, and sorrow on his face, and you gradually learned to fear it more than the berating your friends were perpetually complaining of. Tonight, it makes you want to shrink back against the wall because, even though you _know_ isn't really your fault, you can't help but feel guilty.

The topic of their discussion is whether you should stay the night at the hospital. Apparently, it's not standard procedure, but the doctor is worried about what effects the stress might have on your "weakened state" It's takes you a minute to realize that they're talking about your Lyme's Disease, about how relapses are always possible and stress doesn't help you any.

God, won't they let you forget one traumatic experience here?

Just then, you swear you see a black doctor walk past, mouth "no," and casually wave his hand. His flippancy should make you mad, but it seems kind of nice that God will still snip at you for taking His name in vain. You really do get "snippy."

--------

You don't think your bed has ever felt so nice, so comforting. You wrap yourself tightly in the covers and thank Him that you are home, even temporarily. It was a hard but well-fought victory, and you realize Grace's rants might have a smidgeon of truth to them after all

They finally acquiesced and agreed to let you spend the night at home only if you agreed you would go back tomorrow and talk to their resident therapist-cop. You're supposed to tell her about the crime, things you couldn't bring yourself to tell Dad (who interrogated you right after you told him and Mom-even though it meant fudging department protocol a bit.)

You don't want to think about tomorrow or tonight or what it'll be like to tell Adam (You know you can't keep a secret forever.) You're just living in the present, in all its chaos, questions, and sorrow.

As you drift off to sleep, you think not the hospital or the humiliation but of the Bat Mitzvah, the zombie musical, the boat, the science fair, and countless other things you did. And you smile, ever so slightly, in the night.


	2. Chapter 2

They let you sleep in, not that that surprises you. Extra sleep is like the universal Girardi concession when something bad happens. Kevin gets paralyzed; let him sleep in. Luke is sick; let him sleep in. You go crazy, so more rest for you. Molestation apparently falls under the same umbrella.

_Molestation._ You hate that word, even more than you hated "hallucination" or "delusion." Those words represented what wasn't real; this one is represents what is. When you thought you were crazy, you imagined that He was like a ghost, something you could pass your hand through and something that antibiotics would evaporate and therapy would whisk away. What isn't real, you figured, can't hurt you.

_Only he was_, you think, feeling his hands on you, touching you, not stopping…

Suddenly, you sit up, and before you know it, you're running down the hall, fast and frantic. If only you could have done this yesterday, when the only "he" in your mind was Him.

………

The waters falls on you, burning, scalding, incredibly hot. It stings your skin with every drop, but you don't move away from the cascade. You imagine the heat burning away everything he touched, cleansing you of it.

You don't need Dr. Dan to tell you this isn't normal (But then again, is _anything _about your life normal?). It's the type of thing the self-mutilators and obsessive compulsives at camp might have done, the same twisted behavior that makes its way on to newsmagazines as "alarming new trends." If God and Lyme's didn't make you go crazy, this just might.

………….

When you get downstairs, Kevin and Luke are already sitting at the table. Luke is blathering on about some physics concept you're never going to understand while Kevin reads the newspaper, totally blocking out Luke. Everything is normal; they must not know yet.

_Thank God._

You sit down in an empty chair not bothering to get anything to eat. The thought of putting food in your mouth is extremely off-putting somehow, so you just sit there in the silence, cherishing this moment of being invisible. Even the drama queen in you knows being no one is better than being who you'll become.

Just as you're reaching for the newspaper, Mom and Dad walk into the kitchen. Mom is holding a rolled up piece of newspaper in her hand, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out why.

You can feel them staring at you, terrified but loving, unsure but authoritative, repulsed but sheltering. You are their only daughter, the child they swore to love and protect, but you are also the victim, someone broken and not yet healed, someone they don't quite understand. You are a paradox, just like He said.

………..

The hospital. Again. For some hideous reason, your family seems drawn to this place like the proverbial moth to the flame, except the moth has the good fortune of only being fried once. You, on the other hand, just keep getting beaten, drawn back, and beaten again. You'd like to argue that cruel twist of fate with Him sometime, but you don't expected to win in the least (The record is in His favor from all the times he creamed you at chess anyway).

Today, there is a woman waiting for you when you pass through the sliding automatic doors of the hospital. She is dressed in uniform and has her long auburn hair swept back in neat ponytail. The women, whose name you pay no mind to (You cringe at the thought of ever meeting her again, away.), notices you immediately. She and Dad greet each other by name, so you're guessing they see each other around (Could this get any _more _humiliating? Probably, but you don't want to know how.). Next, she introduces herself briefly to Mom and then beckons you follow her down the hall. This whole time, you don't stay a word.

The room she takes you to is more of a conference room than a hospital room. Two large stuffed chairs are positioned on either side of a small wooden table where a laptop rests. It is only then that it occurs to you that your words will be taken down and distributed among your father's friends and colleagues as needed. As hard as the deposition was, you think, this is going to be far worse.

It crosses your mind that this is type of thing that He would love to talk to you about, not just to prove one of His points about perspective, but also to comfort You in His strange yet effective way. As much as you know you should be mad at Him and as much as you want to, it is hard not admit how much you need Him right now. You searched for Him in the faces of the pedestrians as you drove through the streets and gazed at the faces in the hospital hallways in hopes of finding Him among them. Yet He wasn't there, at least not that you could see. You take a deep breath and sit down, keeping His face in your mind all the while like a rock in the storm.

The woman sits down opposite you and readies her laptop. Then she asks you the question you've been dreading: _What happened?_

………

It was an art party, the type of thing Adam would have loved with strange abstract paintings, senseless sculptures (not one-millionth as good as his, mind you), and other stuff you couldn't even begin to affix a label to. In truth, you never really liked stuff like that, but you went anyway because you thought that it might help connect you to Adam, even though he was busy working at the design studio that night.

You ordered a sweet coffee drink and absent mindedly milled around for a while. The art was good, you'd say, but no where near the level of Adam's (not that you're all that great of a judge, anyway). They seemed to lack that dynamic punch, the feeling that you were around something filled with life and motion, something moved you to the depths of your soul and changed forever how you saw the world. With these works, you just saw the paint or the metal. They were shells.

Actually, there is only one piece that you can truly remember from that whole ordeal. It was a painting of a lion and tiger in the mist of a fight. It was pretty good, you guess, but the guy standing by it kept distracting you. He was tall and lean but fairly strong and had shaggy light brown hair. He must have been the artist because he stayed over there a large part of the night, talking to random passer-bys. For some reason, he creped you out, though you don't know why (It's not as if you don't have enough encounters with random "strangers.").

But he didn't address you by name, didn't tell you to build a boat, didn't quote classic literature, didn't announce that he was casting a zombie-themed musical, so you just walked away and pushed the guy out of your head. It's not like you didn't have enough to worry about in your life.

It was later, maybe twenty minutes later, when you decided to go the bathroom. The bathrooms at the place were really poorly positioned (as though the architect hadn't actually considered the people that would be in the building until the project was almost due), and so they had been placed in a small wall niche on the north side of the building.

It was in that small, desolate, shitty corner of the building that another piece of sanity dropped out of your life.

The guy from the painting was waiting for you there as you opened the stall door. Just sitting there and twiddling his thumbs like the creep he is. Before you can say anything, he came into the stall, and _it_ started. You don't remember what happened, exactly where his hands went first or the look in his eyes as he stared at you before he mercifully let you go and walked away.

All you can really remember is what you didn't do: you didn't bite or kick or scream like they always said, you just stood there transfixed in horror. You were weak, silent, the consummate victim. You became a person who, no matter what any therapist, cop, or PSA tells you, will always wonder in some dark place if it was somehow in some way her fault. It is then you realize that no amount of hot water can wash out evil. Hopefully, there's something that can. You'll have to ask God.


	3. Chapter 3

You lie on your bed, your head swimming with fear. Anything you do is going to hurt someone in some way. You'll be burdening them with your problems and your fears, destroying them as you spiral downward. You can't do that; you can't force them to live with this, and so you hide in your room.

There was a time when you wouldn't have given a second thought about burdening someone else with this, but you've changed since then. Now, you're used to hiding yourself, to flying solo. You carried around the burden of God, wonderful though it is, and shouldered the burdens of Stevie, Grace, Adam, Casper, and Judith and yet you survived. It was sharing your burden with Adam Rove that almost killed you.

You gave him your secret to shoulder, your faith to uphold, but he just let it fall on empty words. Sure, he believed you later, but that was after the damage had been done and you were immersed in a world of lamps and insanity that ripped apart your soul. You always wondered if it was the platitude, not the silence, that pushed you into desolation.

But there's even more, of course, for His creation is complex. It is not just the reasons of God that make you afraid to talk to Adam but the reasons of man as well. It was not to long ago that Adam had wanted to sleep with you; in his eyes, you were beautiful. You always kind of took it for granted, his love for you, but now what will see when he looks at you?

You'd love to delude yourself and say that nothing will change, but you now that's complete crap. Because, you see, you can feel the change within you, tearing apart the old Joan Girardi. To say that nothing has changed would not only be a lie but a platitude. And platitudes destroy.

…….

You stand in front of your mirror, trying on different outfits and hairstyles, trying to decide who you are now. Before you left for crazy camp, you dyed your hair black and styled it in bangs just to mess with His creation. When you wanted to be "bad" like Judith, you wore black and shed your scarves. You drew the boxes and then put yourself in them, painting yourself as whoever you wanted to be. But now there's no box to put yourself in, no fashion fads to flow with, and you're lost as to what you should be. There is no standard dress code when it comes to telling stuff like this to your brothers.

Telling Kevin and Luke is your unofficial assignment for the day, handed down not by the Almighty but by Mom and Dad instead (At least they're direct.). They seem to be on this big openness kick, chattering on about how talking about it will help you cope. Part of you wants to bite back at them, to point out just how open Mom was about the rape or how much Dad told you about Richard, but you're silent. Talking was what got you in trouble in the first place-talking to God, to Adam, to Dr. Dan… And yet you keep talking. You don't want to make that mistake again.

...

It is a quarter past two when hunger drives you out of your room. You haven't eaten all day, and common sense dictates you can't hide up there for eternity. So you head downstairs, praying for solitude.

As turns out, you have no such luck. Just as you're sitting down at the table with your chocolate sauce, Pop Tart, and Coco Puffs (Thank Him for comfort food, at least), Luke comes in and sits down across the table from you. _ Thanks a lot._

He's sitting there across from you, staring at your junk food fest. Normally, you know, he would make some smart remark. But this isn't normal, and Luke's smart enough to realize that. You can tell he's on the talking, of asking you a question, and if you hear _Are you okay?_ one more time you just might scream.

So you grab a napkin and a pencil from the counter and began to write. You scrawl quickly choppy sentences, blunt and to the point. And then, without thinking about it, you sign your name in delicate cursive, making it official, reinforcing the real.

You shove your makeshift confession across the table to Luke, grab your bag, and walk out the door.

...

You wander the streets, dodging pigeons and pedestrians without much thought. It as though you're walking on clouds or water, undefined by effort and friction (See, you learned _something_ in Physics.). Thoughts and memories run through your head in a jumble, so much so that you cannot distinguish one from another. Thinking without thought.

This helps you, though you don't have a clue as to why. You've done it for as long as you can remember, back even to elementary school. You would just walk off in the your little neverland, going nowhere because you had nowhere to go. Once, you tried to explain this to Dr. Dan, but he just smiled smugly as though you were just proving his point once again, proving your own insanity.

You're staring down at the sidewalk when a flash of red catches your eye. A little red-haired girl stands at the corner and waves. Around the corner, a black man standing at a folding table glances up and smiles. You cross the street and find yourself walking next to a boy with spiky brown hair who gently nods as you meet His eyes. Before you can say anything, He walks off, raising His hand casually in the air. It takes you a moment to realize that you don't have to say anything at all.

Then you begin to walk home, knowing that He is walking beside you. You always figured you wandered in search of something. But you weren't searching at all, just finding what was always there. You just didn't know it. And you've finally got an answer now.

_Thank You._


	4. Chapter 4

Today is Monday, a Monday where the sky shines brightly, the clouds are fluffy and white and harmless, and the birds are chirping in the trees. It is a perfect day (almost a Disney movie), and you hate it. You want darkness and gloom, and you get light and fluffy instead (Irony, much, God?). Light is all about seeing, and you want to hide, to slide in among the clouds, and melt into invisibility. But apparently He isn't going to spring for that; today you're going to have to be seen.

You didn't sleep very well the night before, and it's not helping all that much today. You feel tired and cranky and generally just bad, but you're going to school anyway. Why? He only knows (and probably won't say, either.)

On the bus ride to school, you curl up against the window and use your scarf as a makeshift pillow on the hard, plastic window. It's not all too comfortable, but it works. You're adapting. Half-asleep, you say something in this regard to Luke, who's sitting next to you. He's adopted the same concerned demeanor of Mom, Dad, and Kevin, and the four of them keep looking at you like they expect you to break down and jump off a cliff at any given moment. Which, of course, you wouldn't do. You don't want to be their "crazy daughter" again.

Last night, dinner had not been fun. Everyone (you included) had adopted the classic Girardi tactic of silent interrogation. Luke and Kevin ate their lasagna sparingly, their faces morphing between concern, anger, disgust, and confusion. Even Kev's usually outgoing candor and sense of humor seemed to have been relegated elsewhere because, unlike crazy camp, this is not something about which he can tease; Mom would had taken out his eyes had he tried. Out of all the people in your family, Mom understands painfully well, well enough to know that this is something where no words are ever quite right and trying is sometimes just the first step to failure. So she is silent, too. Dad studies you from the head of the table, and it is as though he's looking deeper into you, than the rests, as though you're a puzzle, a case set out for him to solve. Because, you see, Dad already knows what happened: he read the report. Not that he came out and told you, of course, but you can see it in him, see his knowledge, see that he knows. And you didn't speak either, because you knew that tonight your blessed silence would be shattered today. Today you will have to speak.

As the bus pulls up to the stop, you sit up and awaken to your nightmare.

……

You and Luke arrive at Physics late, just seconds before the bell. It is unspoken agreement between the two of you, that you will dawdle in the halls, take the long away around, and utilize only the most crowded corridors. This way, you won't have to talk to Adam or Grace. Nobody will have a chance to ask you about your weekend (What would you say, "Oh it was a physical and emotionally scarring journey into the depths of living hell. You?") or inquire as to why you never returned their calls. It is a scheme devised to give you just the slightest edge, the smallest chance at surviving the day.

As you slide onto your stool, you stare determinedly at the desk, intent not to meet anyone's eyes. You hear Adam's voice whisper a barely audible "Hi, Jane" to which you respond with a simple "Hi." As you speak, you wait for your voice to crack, anticipating the destruction of your flimsy façade. You're stuck here all period because Lischak wouldn't let you change desks without a good explanation (like you'll give her yours…), and you can already tell this is going to be hell (Figuratively speaking, of course, as to avoid one of His lectures.) Giving a sidelong glance to Adam's face, you wonder how you can be so afraid of someone you love.

You never thought you'd actually be happy about a Physics test over material you haven't studied and don't understand, but you are. And so you spend the period, writing down formulas that you don't understand, scribbling them out, and fruitlessly writing new ones that you're pretty sure aren't even real. You get very little done this period, but you utilize every minute of it, only handing in your test you head out the door. That way, there is no time to talk.

….

Luke walks with you in the hallway today. Not slightly behind you, as he usually does, but right beside you. It is his attempt to protect you, and to be honest, you sort of appreciate it. It's macho and pointless and kind of unsettling, but at least he's trying to help, and you've failed too many times not to appreciate effort. After all, if God didn't appreciate the fact that you tried, you probably would have been reduced to pile of ashes long before now (Mercy _is _a wonderful thing.) So, thanks, Luke.

You don't see Adam come up behind you or else you would certainly move away. His arm snakes around your waist gently, pulling you close; it's a loving motion, a kind motion and yet you can't take it. For some reason He only knows, the touch sickens you, and you bolt toward the bathroom. This is just wonderful.

….

You sit on cool tile floor of the stall and shut your eyes. The wave of nausea has passed by, but you still feel shaken up. Adam wasn't the guy at the show, the one whose hands reached inside you, who pinned you against the wall. They didn't even look the same. And yet Adam's touch was like poison. His hands, so skilled and delicate, became one and the same with the hands of that night. You, Joan Girardi, are totally, unequivocally insane.

You open your eyes to see Adam and Grace standing above you. They both wear the same worried expression. Wait… Adam is here? In the girls' bathroom? (Why do you care? Is it really that big of deal?) Grace opens her mouth to speak, and you already know the question: _Are you okay?_ But all you can think about is a guy in the girl's bathroom… again. And then you really do hurl.

Grace stares at the vomit on the floor, but there is no disgust on her face, just a strange sense of familiarity. You're puzzled until you remember that Grace has cleaned up a lot of vomit in her day. You look toward Adam and then point to door, and Grace quickly ushers him out in the stern, commanding way only she can. Then she leaves the stall and comes back with a wad of paper towels in her hand. Without a word, she starts cleaning the stall. It is then you realize that Grace Polk is stronger than you think.

As she cleans, you find yourself talking to Grace, talking about _it_. Somehow, it is easier than it ever was before. Maybe it is because Grace is a girl or maybe because she keeps her face solemner than most, hiding tears with a certain finesse that is born only of years of practice. Maybe it is because she says "That sucks" instead of "I'm sorry" and doesn't feed you some platitude from a TV movie. Or maybe it's because Grace knows how to be strong when life is shit. Or maybe she's just a friend. Whatever, it is you thank God for Grace.

Not long after Grace finishes wiping up the floor, Mom comes rushing in. Half-crying, she rushes over and enfolds you in her arms. Her grip is strong, tough, unyielding. She helps you to your feet. In your ear, she whispers quietly, "I know, honey." The funny thing is, you actually believe it.

…..

"On Saturday, I was molested."

It sounds so weak, bland, so simple when it is the exact opposite of that. It is power and dynamism, hell on earth, pain beyond description. But you can't describe that to yourself, much less to Adam Rove. So you settle for plain, crappy vanilla.

He and you sit on opposite sides of the table. Your hands are withdrawn into your lap, as though to protect them from his touch. You are sitting in an empty classroom Mom found for you. The minute you walked out of the bathroom and saw Adam, you _knew_ you had to talk So here you are, spilling your guts (not literally, thank Him) to Adam Rove.

For a second, Adam looks like he might be sick himself. Then he utters, barely audible, two words:

"I'm sorry."

_Sorry for what?_, you wonder, _Sorry for not being there? Sorry that's he become poison to you? Sorry for loving you?_

For a moment, you are mad, and then it hits you that neither you know what say. Disconnect.

….

That night, a bouquet of flowers is delivered to your house. The tag reads _Jane, I'd build you a sculpture, but there isn't time. Adam._

It's lovely and sweet and yet sad, too.

_But there isn't time._

You understand perfectly.

You love Adam Rove, and yet don't know if you can be with him. You are silent, and yet you speak. Life is hell, and yet you see God.

There's always black with white. Even in plain vanilla.


	5. Chapter 5

**_Author's Note: Well, this is the end. This piece was hard for me to write because it is such a loaded subject. I sincerely hope and pray I did it justice right to end. If I didn't, I'm sorry. Thank you to all of those who read and reviewed, you gave me the inspiration to turn this from a one-shot story into something more. Enjoy. _**

Four days ago, the nightmares started. You hoped they won't, that you would be an exception to the clichéd old rule, but you had no such luck. Before you became the God talker you are today, you never really had nightmares in the traditional sense. While other kids would wake screaming about axe-welding clowns and boogeymen, kola bears were your worst nighttime menace. You were lucky.

These nightmares are not the nightmares of Judith, eerie in their realism. Rather, they are the nightmares of Mental Acres, of desolation and bewilderment. Sometimes, the visions are short and shocking, little more than transient, blurred faces or almost undecipherable bits of sound. Other times, it feels as though a single dream devours the entire night in its wandering, senseless prose. These are the dreams that made you awaken screaming and sobbing from your slumber, proving your insanity once more. These are crazy dreams, insane dreams. These-not diving boards nor kola bears-are true nightmares. And they're hell.

…..

You stand at the window and breathe in the cool, crisp air. Outside, the sky is dark, rich velvet, almost starless, and incredibly deep. You haven't done this since September, but you did it a lot at crazy camp. Before the counselors ushered you in for a night of sleep behind sealed plastic windows and heavy, locked doors, you would steal away for a few minutes and just stare into nothingness. Eventually, a counselor would come and usher you back to the cabins, and you would glance back for one fleeting moment and try to catch a glimpse of God. You needed Him then, and you need Him now, too, to console you, to wake you up.

The soft jingle of your cell phone distracts you from your contemplations, and you head over to your bedside table to pick it up. You've received a text message. Reading it, you smile slightly and then obey. Not because you have to, but because you want to and because, well…

_IAMALWAYS: Joan, you don't have to look for me. I'm always here. Sleep well._

….

Your grades are erratic. You've gotten 30's in Physics and perfect scores in Lit, A's on French vocabulary quizzes and D's on the next day's test. Some days you throw yourself into work, reading your Lit book cover to cover just to avoid thinking about _it_. Other times you feel so browbeaten and worn down that you just can't make yourself care about past perfect tenses or torque formulas. Your Trig teacher even went as far to pull you aside the other day and ask if you're okay. You smiled, said yes, and walked out the door, knowing all the while that lying's a sin.

You've made it through every day but the first one so far. You push through them with a blunt, unthinking determination, throwing grades, friends, and everything else by the wayside in the process. Your sole goal is to make the minutes tick by and the hours pass. So far, you've succeeded.

The people around you form a silent fortress, always there but never touching, willing to let you be. Luke, Grace, and Adam walk you to every class now, even when their own are halfway across the building and on a different floor. Part of you thinks it's over the top, but it's too sweet of a sacrifice to ignore, so you let them continue and make a note to serve a few detentions on their behalf. Every now and then, you pass Mom in the hallways and never meet her eyes, afraid that if you do, one of you might burst into tears. You hope she understands.

She's tried to talk you at home a bit, but you've ignored that too. You can see the pain etched in her face, how this isn't just about you but about her, too. Sometimes you wish you just said "no" to God and never found those paintings, so that you could wrap yourself in blissful ignorance and feel only the pain in you. If that was the case, maybe you could have talked. But as it is, you can't open your mouth without hurting both of you, so you just resolve to shut up.

You've seen God in the hallways in all His different forms, the Goth checking out books at the library and lady in lunch line, but you haven't talked. He'll wave or smile and one time he one time he handed you a book to reshelf (_Howards End_must be a favorite of His.), but He never forces you to talk. There's been plenty of opportunities for you to slip away and have a little chat, plenty of times when you could tell your posse that you had to go the bathroom and use your gift (curse?) to speak to Him, but you never take them. You are terrified of Him, of what He'll say and what He won't, so you chose not to speak.

On Friday, He passes you a card in the hallway that bears the embossed name Fran Richards on one side and a penciled in note reading "3:00 PM" on the back. Slightly confused, you shove the card in your bag and walk on, wondering why He won't just give you salve and bandages and bind up your wounds instead.

…..

That night Dad calls you into the living room after dinner. He and Mom are sitting there, backlit by the glow of the fire in the fireplace. It's strangely reminiscent of that time, just under a week ago, when they stopped you and found out what was wrong. This doesn't look good, but then again that goes for just about everything now.

"Joan, I need to talk to you about the case."

His voice is matter-of-fact, calm from years of practice, millions of times uttering that same line. You are "Joan," not "honey" or "sweetie." You are the victim that cannot be, that must not be, his daughter. The Joan who has a case file at the station is not the same Joan he fathered and not the same Joan he loves. Because if she is, it just might destroy him.

He doesn't say what you're expecting; he doesn't announce a lineup or tell you triumphantly that they caught the bastard. Rather, he starts talking about a program through the department where victims of "this type of crime" (his words exactly) meet with a psychologist who will work with them-and for them-if there is a trial. He's made you an appointment, he says, for tomorrow at three, if you'll go.

It takes you a minute to fully understand what he just said and dissect the meaning of the words. _If there is a trial_… not "when" but "if," and you know your father well enough to know he would say "when." It's his carefully veiled way of telling you the trail has run cold, that they'll never find the guy who makes your nights sleepless and your boyfriend poison. This "program" is an attempt to try and give you something when his far and away first choice is out of reach. And as much as you hate the idea of subjecting yourself to another psychologist/psychiatrist, you can't bring yourself to say no.

"Okay, Daddy," you say quietly, watching as the line he drew between the two Joans blurs.

…..

You stand in front of the office door and briefly evaluate your last chance to bail. The only thing keeping you here is the card He gave you because surely a God-supported psychologist couldn't be as useless and soul destroying as Dr. Dan (not that's saying all too much).

Sighing, you push open the door and see perhaps the thing you're least prepared for. Sitting in a leather chair is none other than Judith's mom.

"Joan?"

….

"I'm… sorry I have to see you like this," she says, attempting to regain her composure as she ushers you over to the vacant seat.

_So am I._

"Your name is, um, different."

"I kept my maiden name. It's fairly common in this profession, and Bill insisted upon it. He was always more of the researcher type, but my passion has always been helping victims of…"

You will not let her say that word, so you instead you cut in and ask the question you've been wanting to ask for a long time.

"Tell me about Judith."

…..

For the next hour, the conversation shifts between you and Judith, between Friday Night and Saturday night. When it's about you, Fran is strong and assured, well practiced in her art and well accustomed to the horror she is hearing. She knows when to push and when to let go. She gets around the games you play and tricks you use to slide out of speaking. When the conversation turns to Judith, however, she very nearly crumbles. The pain in her voice is raw, and the air of practice is swept away. She is still standing at the edge of her diving board without God to nudge her on and tell her to jump.

When you leave her office, you are completely exhausted by the game of emotional volleyball you just played. Talking about Judith opened your old scars and dug into her still fresh ones. It brought up your old grief, grief you thought you had moved past, and mixed it in with the new. To top it off, you are left with that same icky, embarrassed feeling talking about _it_ always leaves you with. You wonder if you might qualify as the world's worst patient if you managed to lead both of you into an emotional massacre.

Down the hall, you see God. You want to yell at Him, to ask why He would want you to do that, and just maybe get in answer. You want to talk to somebody with all the knowledge and all the answers (even those that He won't share) when you have none. Everyone wants you to talk to man, but you need to talk to God.

"Why don't You just stop it? Why can't we just _forget_?

"Grief is never really over, Joan. You just have to learn to live above and beyond it. It's not so much about going toward the light as knowing it's there to begin with,"

"So you're saying I _shouldn't_ go to the light?"

He chuckles slightly, "It's not time for that Joan. Think about now."

And then He walks away, leaving you with more questions then answers. That's okay, though, because it's normal. Well, at least for you.

……

That night, you're too afraid to sleep. The prospect of Judith melding with your current nightmares is to too terrifying to face, so you've elected to forgo sleep in favor of meticulous room-organizing coupled with lots of caffeine and headphones with music on full-blast.

You're digging around your closet floor when something catches your eye. Curious, you reach back and grasp four round objects. It takes a moment for your sleep-deprived brain to recognize them as the juggling balls Adam gave you the night Judith died. You hold them in your hands and stare at them for a second, the brilliant blue glow illuminating your face and casting shadows on your hands. Slowly, you begin to toss them up, relearning the rhythm of juggling as you go. And as you juggle in the blackness of the night, new thoughts begin to form in your head, and part of you begins to wonder if this is really just for you.

…..

_These were meant for Judith, but she couldn't take them, so I did instead. But I guess you should them instead; it's better that way… Judith, she cared about you… She wasn't always the best at showing it, but if you knew her you could tell… Maybe she wasn't the best friend or the best daughter, but I loved her, and I miss her, and I know you still do, too. Good luck._

_Take care,_

_Joan_

_(JoJo)_

You place the box carefully in front of the door and walk away. You know they won't bring Judith back or make it stop hurting. They won't bind up her heart or cure her soul or make the nightmares disappear. No, you're no longer naïve enough to believe that. But maybe they will help just a little, to help the dreams grow shorter and make the pain just a little less sharp. And maybe they'll make just enough light by which to see God.

You know nothing will make _your _grief go away, either. Nothing will make this less disgusting or less traumatizing. It will be there within in you, a part you, until the day you die. No, it will never vanish, never disappear, but maybe you can live with it. Because it may be there forever, but He will be there longer.

No matter what you have lost, He will always find you. You know that for no reason that you can explain, no reason you can say or write down. You know it simply because you have faith, faith in light and in faith Him, He who has always been there and always will, if only you just believe.

And you do.


	6. Epilogue

**Author's note: Because I am finally done with the draining process of college apps (now I just have to get in!), I wrote this piece to reward myself. The cheese factor is kind of off the charts, but I hope you like it, and I tried to make it stay in character-you'll have to tell me if I succeeded. Anyway, please enjoy this story about a show I still miss and characters I don't own. Oh, and please review!**

Tomorrow, it'll be a year. You guess you should be happy at you survived that you survived this long, but you can't think about that right now. All you can consider is how much you dread the chance to remember again. Some days are better than others; some days you can almost forget about the whole thing and shove it back into the darkest corner of your mind, but you know tomorrow won't be one of those days.

Mom's been extra sweet to you the past couple of days, acting like she did when you were a sick child. Sometimes, she'll just randomly come up and hug you and ask you if everything's okay. Neither of you have mentioned _it_ by name yet, but there is no doubt what you're talking about. She understands what it's like, the flood of horrible memories that rear their ugly heads, and you wish so much that she didn't, that you didn't. You can see sometimes how much this is hurting her, and you hate yourself all the more for it. It's just creating bad ripples.

You have permission to skip school tomorrow, but you're going anyway. You figure that school, as hellish as can be, could be no worse than sitting around here and having nothing more to think about than why you now have to care about the day when it meant nothing at all before.

…..

The next morning, you can't decide what to wear. You spend about 20 minutes haggling over skirts and jeans to no avail. The clothes you wore that night were taken at the hospital and now are no doubt sitting in an evidence locker at Dad's work, You wish you had them now, so that you could you use them for a guide on what not to wear. You're treating today with absolute precession as though if you make the right choices somehow time will go back and fix everything for you. You can't mess up something as simple as clothes, can you?

When you finally make your way downstairs, you're wearing jeans and a read shirt complemented with a thick white scarf. You finally gave up and figured that looks asexual enough to work for today. You love the scarf, though; it wraps around you hiding you and keeping you warm. It's like a security blanket, only this time you're eighteen and not four.

Kevin and Luke are sitting a table, staring at you as you walk down. You're not sure if they remembered on their own or if Mom and Dad told them to make them be extra nice to you today, not as if they haven't been nice enough the other 364 days of this year. It reminds you a bit of the year after Kevin's accident, actually. There's the same feeling of fake quiet, the same invisible and unspoken boundaries, the same constant subtext running through every scene. The only difference is now it's you who is the hurt one, the recipient of all the sugary sweet niceness and guarded conversation. You wondered how Kevin lived through all this; you're still not sure how you did.

You grab a Pop-Tart from the counter and sit down. You turn it over in your hands for a minute, unsure of whether to eat it or not. You wish vaguely in the back of your mind that anniversaries came with some sort of instruction manual, a simple list of bulleted do's and do not's that you might actually follow for once. Then again, nothing in your life has ever been simple like that. There is no book entitled _So Your Superstar Athlete Brother was Paralyzed_, no guide to talking to God, no handbook on the desolation of thinking you almost got yourself killed because of a hallucination told you to. You're definitely different, all right.

Just as you're about to take a bite of that damn toaster pastry, Luke takes the initiative to inform you that you're late. As you stand up and grab your bag, Mom comes up and tells you to come and talk to her if you need to. You smile complacently and nod, knowing you have no such intention. She smiles a bit sadly and then bends down to kiss you on the forehead. In this instant, you realize, her past doesn't matter; she's just your mother and nothing more.

…..

When you get off the bus, Grace is waiting for you. Not for Luke, though she gives him a warm but cursory smile hello, mind you, but for you. She motions for you to come over and then tells you to follow her. You tell her you can't skip class, and she laughs.

"Study hall, Girardi. Remember? They don't take attendance."

You do remember. The Chem class needed morning sunlight for some experiment they were doing, so they shuffled everyone's schedules. As a result, you get study hall first period, and you get out of 3rd period Gym for AP Bio. Grace is right, and you aren't exactly looking forward to having 45 minutes alone with your thoughts, so you acquiesce and follow Grace.

She leads you down a couple of streets and through a couple alley ways until you reach a large concrete pipe. She ducks in the entrance and you follow, curious. When you come out, you find yourself in a dimly lit concrete cavern with a stream of water down the middle. As you look around, words you haven't heard in years begin to echo in your head.

_You and me, we used to talk/Down in the sewer where we used to walk…_

Careful to keep your scarf from dragging on the ground, you make your way over to the ledge where Grace sits.

"Rove and I always came down here when we were kids. We would do all this stupid crap… One time, I called Rove a wimp and dared him to jump across the stream; the kid actually did it…"

And so she goes on for the next 40 minutes, telling you tons of pointless, meaningless stories about her and Rove. It takes you a minute to get what she's doing, but when you finally do, you're very gratefully. For some reason, either Luke told her or she just knew, Grace remembers what today is. She's giving the only cure she knows, the remedy she gives herself. You wonder how many hours Grace has spent down her, living in faded memories of years gone by. She of all people knows the pain of remembering, of thinking too much; she is giving you an excuse to forget.

As you reach Arcadia High, you pause for moment and thank her.

"Good luck, Girardi," she replies.

……

Your second period class is senior year French, a class you hate but are nonetheless taking because someone told Mom it's "what colleges like to see." Your grades are better this year or at least more stable, back to your old B- average. You applied to bunch of schools by the virtue of rolling admissions and early action, got into a few, and picked a small, relatively unknown one in California. You're looking forward to it, leaving Arcadia and moving to the sunny dreamland all the viewbooks depict. Before all this, you might have been sad about leaving, but now you just want to leave. Your relationship with Adam, while still existent, is obviously screwed up, and the whole town seems to be nothing but unwelcome memories. The only thing you have here is God, and He's omnipresent anyway. So you do well enough to keep your acceptance from getting rescinded and reflect that next year, your friends won't treat this day any differently than the one before it or the one after. You can't decide whether that's good or bad.

……

When you see Adam in the hall before Bio, he looks at you sheepishly and then slowly walks over. You hug him, and he hugs you back, warm and caring, but scared none the less. You have no doubt that Adam Rove has this date stored safely away in his eididatic memory. He looks at you gently, almost sadly, and asks if you're okay. You nod and smile slightly and try not to cry yourself. Then Adam hugs you once and you walk into class together.

Adam has been one of the hardest things about this year. You tell yourself it's getting better (After all, he can touch you now), but you know that's a lie. Your relationship was in trouble as it was, and _it_ certainly didn't help any. Adam sticks by you because it would look horrible to dump his girlfriend after this, and you stay with him because you don't know what else you could do. You're pretty sure you still love him, in the way that love never completely goes away, but there isn't much there anymore. The whole relationship pretty much fell to pieces in your hands, and it kind of broke your heart. You can't convince yourself you don't love him (as much you try), but something got between you that was bigger than both of you. _It _is bigger than adolescent love, bigger than kisses at the school science fair, bigger than jealous hearts, collogues, or dances in the November night air. It was not big enough to destroy your connection, for nothing ever is, but it weakened it to single strand, and that's too thin to hold up your world.

……..

You make through the rest of the day as though it was normal, though you know it is not. It's like an elaborate stage production you're putting on for the world, only Johnny Godway isn't here to direct. Luke, Grace, and Adam all rally around you like they did that first week. Grace tells Friedman to shut it once, and it made you glad for the millionth time he didn't know. Friedman is Friedman, just like he always has been, and you're glad for that, glad the world hasn't quite turned on its head. The only time Friedman wasn't Friedman was when you happened upon him reciting _Hamlet_ at Judith's grave on November 12, 2005. That day, you knew how he felt; today, you're glad he doesn't know how you feel. For Friedman, one dreaded anniversary a year is enough.

You never saw Fran again after that first visit, figuring that the emotional hell you put her though was more than enough. From time to time, though you think of her and Bill, you a little prayer slips through your lips. You pray that He taught them to juggle.

…..

When you see Dad that night after dinner, you notice for perhaps the first time the guilt on his face. This is torturing him, you realize. He hates himself for not doing his job. He is supposed to protect and serve, and he couldn't even protect his own daughter. At the moment, you hate yourself for making him feel guilty. It's not his fault, you want to say, but you know he won't believe it. Dad, who doesn't even believe in God, is a martyr.

All you tell him is that you love him. You hope he believes that, even if he doesn't believe in Him. Because, unlike your weird, confused love for Adam, you know it's completely true.

_Good ripples_, you pray.

……

About eight, you go into your parent's room. Dad is still downstairs, but Mom is sitting on bed waiting for you. You stand in the doorway and stare at her, waiting for something to come to your mind, but it's blank. You're still not very good at telling people.

With tentative steps, you walk over and sit down next to her. She takes your head, and gently pulls you close, hugging you and smoothing your hair like she did that night a year before. You start crying, sobbing with the weight of memories, and you feel her start to cry too as the tears fall in your hair. And together you stay that way until you both fall asleep in a mess of emotions that words can never define, and you mark, in great reluctance, the first anniversary of something you wish with all your heart and soul never was.

…..

In your sleep, you just barely feel the hands as they pick up and carry away to your bed. They are strong hands but soft, and they feel familiar somehow but you can't remember where you have felt them before.

And at the very edges of your sleep, you hear a voice whisper, "Good night, Joan. You finally learned to see in the dark."


End file.
